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"This book clearly explains the intricacies of music technology.  It goes into greater detail than any book I've ever read about the technical Aspects of music recording without being a boring textbook. You will learn a lot with this book. I know I did."


"Digital Audio Explained: for the Audio Engineer is a concise, comprehensible journey through the 1s and 0s of digital audio. A must read for aspiring audio engineers and technologists everywhere."


"Nika is an audio professional who has an insatiable appetite for knowledge of audio technology, sound recording techniques and music... Having practical recording experience and technical knowledge helps him present his ideas in a useful way."


"I am surprised that it has taken this long for someone to write a book for the audio engineer with everything they need to know about digital audio in an easy to understand yet technically accurate format."


"...illuminates the dark, math-ridden corners of our industry in an informal manner with wit and style."


“Nika’s clear and concise examples and explanations are invaluable for the growth and understanding of the future of audio.”

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Foreword

Each passing year brings new proclamations about the pervasiveness of digital audio technology. Each year also brings new books and articles on digital audio technology, each one promising to endow the reader with newfound clarity and a depth of understanding he/she had heretofore not imagined possible. In many respects, these writings can be viewed as successes, in some cases chronicling the latest and greatest research and development and providing researchers with new starting-points for discovery, in other cases educating degreed engineers who merely need to learn the vocabulary of an unfamiliar field. It is safe to say that digital audio is now a mature discipline that is not merely pervasive; omnipresent might be a better description. As yet, there have not been many texts that attempt to educate the far broader demographic who also needs to know how digital audio really works: the practitioners who actually use digital audio equipment to make recordings. This book is for those people.

Other than mere intellectual curiosity, why should the end-user care about the theory behind the technology? (I should emphasize that there is nothing wrong with mere intellectual curiosity and that this book will certainly be satisfying to the “knowledge collector.”) Armed with the knowledge in this book, the digital recordist will be endowed with two exciting capabilities:

Would you like to have these capabilities? It is easier said than done; it will require a bit of discipline and mental investment on the part of you, the reader. I urge you to read the material with an open mind, commit to reading manageable chunks of material at a time (it could be a few pages or it could be a chapter), and resist the temptation to move forward until you understand what you have read. Things that are worth learning often demand some effort, and understanding digital audio may actually require you to do a bit of “unlearning,” for the field of digital audio has long been fraught with misinformation and superstition. Diligent reader who stays the course will be rewarded with a newfound clarity as well as the capacity to grow with the field itself – in addition to being a better recordist and a better consumer!

Digital Audio Explained fills a long-standing gap in the body of literature on digital audio by presenting much of the underlying theory of digital audio without presuming that the reader has any advanced mathematical skills or an understanding of physics. The book is far more than a mere user’s guide that explains which knob to turn or which setting to use; rather, it teaches the principles that form the basis of digital audio from the ground up: acoustics, human hearing, waveform analysis, sampling theory, data conversion, and digital processing. The exposition of these topics is assisted and enhanced by a rich collection of graphics that complement the text at every step.

By necessity these principles sometimes need to be presented heuristically rather than rigorously. Approaching digital audio through the more traditionally rigorous route, usually taken by researchers and designers, is likely to leave you “cold” and bogged down in a morass of mathematical details that will seem irrelevant to the end goal of being a better digital recordist or a smarter consumer. In the fields of research and design, however, there is a vast body of literature available, much of which will be within your mental grasp once you complete this book. Armed with the knowledge you have gleaned from this book, you will find that you will know

I have long felt that these two things are the most important side effects of an education in any field.
   
In closing, I urge you to go ahead and invest the time and mental energy in reading this book. Keep at it. Do not let it become yet another book you have glanced at, put up on your bookshelf and forgotten about. It contains the requisite material for you to become a knowledgeable digital audio practitioner and a smarter person, each of which carries its own rewards. The pedagogical style is friendly and approachable and asks very little of the reader with regard to formal background. Your investment will reap dividends in short order. I have yet to see a quicker path to such a depth of understanding of the subject than this book. So open your mind, take your shoes off, put your feet up, and get busy. Most of all, though, remember why you are reading this book and enjoy the process.

Glenn Zelniker
- September 2004